2012-11-02

Superbowl XLVII Projection, Week 9, Thursday

San Francisco over Houston

One neat thing about the NFL's division setup and short season is the way it makes division games extremely meaningful. Kansas City had a measly 0.305% chance of winning the division until last night, and now have a 0.027% chance, less than 10% of the original value. That's because they played San Diego, and knocked themselves down a peg in many tiebreakers with the loss. San Diego's odds improved while all 3 division teams lost ground, because they pulled away from Oakland and got closer to Denver, again tipping some tiebreakers in their favor.

I've got an extra place of precision in some numbers I don't publish here, and that puts KC at a 0.0002% chance of winning the Superbowl, which rounds to the 0.000 you see below. As a reminder, or for anyone who didn't follow along last year, a minus sign (-) will be displayed instead of 0.000 when the value is truly 0 out of all the millions of simulations. 0.000 indicates a value that rounds below 0.001%